


Enough For Now

by girlwithapen109



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Brother Feels, Brothers, Coping, Culture Shock, Drinking to Cope, Forgiveness, Gen, General mush, Grunkle Ford Has Issues, Grunkle Stan's marriage, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Marilyn Rosenstein, Romances, Self-Acceptance, feeling lost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 21:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12044904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlwithapen109/pseuds/girlwithapen109
Summary: Stanford and Stanley share some long over-due conversation about all that Ford missed while aboard the Stan O War II.





	Enough For Now

**Author's Note:**

> I thought it would be interesting for the twins to talk about the stuff they missed in each other's lives. Also, I kept Ford as aromantic but threw in a bit about how he had at least noticed a woman once.
> 
> Please comment with your reaction! It's my first fan-fiction :)

The waves beat rhythmically against the Stan O War’s hull. Stanford leaned heavily against the cabin wall, staring out into the dark waters. His eyes stared somewhat wearily onto the sloshing waves, his mouth turned down. Inside, Stanley’s tumultuous snoring blared away, as it normally did. The sound usually kept Ford up, but tonight sleep had eluded him for other reasons.

“We’re on our way home, Sixer,” Stan had chuckled earlier that day. “It’s been too long!”

Ford had smiled, but he hadn’t shared Stan’s enthusiasm.

Now, as the waves rocked the boat steadily, Ford let the rhythm fill his thoughts. Home. He supposed Gravity Falls was his home…New Jersey certainly was not. There were nights when a deep melancholy would simply fill his chest and he would feel burdened with an almost indescribable sadness. He still dreamed about the portal. Some dreams were pleasant, filled with the excitement that discovering a new place or new creature always gave him. Other dreams were dark and left him dry mouthed and covered in a cold sweat when he awoke.  
He had wandered for so long. For nearly half of his life, he had been a wanderer, a survivor, a wanted man, a man who thought he didn’t need anyone…and now who was he? Sometimes, he didn’t know. He loved Stan, he loved that they had honored their childhood dream of traveling together. But Stan didn’t know the hell he had been through for thirty years, couldn’t appreciate the beauty and the horrors of his experiences. He often filled up pages and pages of his new journals with tales and ramblings of his exploits just so he could feel like he was telling _someone_ , someone who understood.

Now, nearly hypnotized by the rocking of the water, he allowed the feeling he had been trying to fight off for so long to sink deep into his chest.

_I’m lost._

The words brought immediate emotion to his eyes. He passed a hand over his face, suddenly feeling incredibly distraught. _I’m lost._ The words felt right…the words described everything. He had once dreamed of a time when he might escape from the endless dimension hopping, the constant fear that Bill would find him, or that he wouldn’t be strong enough to take Bill down if he got the chance.

Now that he had returned, now that the promised apocalypse had come and ended, now that things had been made right…he felt so empty, so dis-placed. He missed the constant adventure of his old life, he missed the pride he had once found in solving nearly impossible problems, he missed the beings he had met in his travels. He had been lost in the portal…but now he was lost in his own world.  
_This is how Stanley must have felt_ , he thought darkly. _When Dad threw him out onto the street…when I turned my back on him…_  
He had been so selfish. What’s worse, he didn’t even know that he had been selfish until Stan had so happily sacrificed himself to destroy Bill, because that was supposed to be him, Stanford, who destroyed himself taking down Bill…

But Stan had taught him more in that single act of selflessness than he had learned from thirty years of independence and self-sustainment.

“Sixer?”

Ford started at the low, gravelly voice behind him.

“Sixer…you okay?”

Stan moved quietly to stand beside his brother, gripping his shoulder with a warmness that had grown between them since their first trials during their voyage. They had nearly driven each other crazy in those first weeks. Then the storm hit. They had worked together to save the Stan O War…and their bickering, like the waves, had calmed.  
Ford let a short sigh escape him. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Stan’s tone was inquiring, but not pushy. He had used the same tone once a long time ago, when bags as deep tinged as bruises had deepened Ford’s eyes. Ford could still hear his words, though he had brushed them off at the time “… _Easy, Ford_. _We can work it out together._ ”

Ford briefly considered lying. He continued to stare out into the distance before frowning and meeting his brother’s eye. “About the past…and the future.”  
Stan rolled his eyes at the vagueness in the answer. “Did I keep you up with my snorin’ again? Those strips don’t make much of a difference, huh?”

Ford laughed somewhat sourly. “No, but it wasn’t you that kept me up. Come inside…it’s freezing.”

“I wasn’t the one standing out here!” Stan muttered, following Ford into the low-ceilinged cabin.

They worked in practiced movements: Stan stood hunched over the hot plate, heating coffee and soup. Ford worked silently with their supplies, calculating what they had left before their arrival at the small Oregon marina in a few days. Stan broke the silence with a somewhat raucous chuckle. “Do you remember Carla McCorkle, Ford?”

Ford smiled drily. “Do you mean to say, ‘Hot-Pants’ McCorkle?”

Stan grinned. “I wonder what ever happened to her. She probably married some surgeon or something.”

“That reminds me of something that Dipper wrote in that old journal of mine that he kept last summer…an entry about how you were married once?” Ford hadn’t turned around, but he could imagine Stan’s sudden change of mood and he took an evil delight in it. Stan muttered something behind him. “What did you say?”

“I said…I thought I erased that entry.”

“I found your photo-copies of the journal in the basement. There’s no running, Stanley, as there’s only thirty feet of space on this craft, anyhow. What’s the story with this Marilyn Rosenstein?” He was smirking as he spoke.

Stan huffed. “Marilyn Rosenstein…the woman who charmed me at the Poker table and nearly stole one of my only possessions at the time, the Stanleymobile.” He sighed. “I don’t know if that was the best or the worst 48 hours of my life.”

Ford laughed. “Marilyn, the sister-in-law I never knew.”

“Laugh it up, Poindexter. I don’t have any inter-dimensional nephews or nieces that I’m not aware of, do I?”

Ford scoffed audibly. “Only if basic biology was reversed…” He frowned as a sudden thought came to him. “…which it was, in Dimension 348…but no, I’ve maintained a life-long bachelorhood.”

Stan passed him a mug of soup as they both sat down in the cramped eating quarters. “Oh, come on—there was never anyone? No hot-pants wearing girl at college? No lucky lady when you were studying all of that sciencsy-stuff?”

Ford smiled bemusedly. “Nothing serious.”

“So, there was something. Spit it out, Sixer. What else are we going to talk about at 5:00 AM?”

Unenthusiastic, Ford seemed to mull on things before saying slowly, “There was one woman…she was a first-year professor while I was a grad-student.”

“She must ‘a been a looker for my nerdy bro to stop staring at his books for,” Stan chuckled.

“She was beautiful, intelligent…” he shrugged dismissively. “But I received my research grant soon after we began to speak and my life in Gravity Falls was all work. Not that I regret my solitude. Actually, I preferred it that way. It was…easier without the burden of someone else.” He looked up from his soup to see a flash of sadness in Stan’s eye. “Not that everyone is a burden, mind you.” He smiled faintly.

“Heh,” Stan voiced, rubbing his neck awkwardly. “I guess there wasn’t much chance for you to end up with a family after that day…that first day in Gravity Falls, when you stuck a cross bow in my face. Honestly, I always felt guilty about that.”

Silence fell between them…the same that always fell when anyone mentioned that day. It had been months since either of them had brought it up.

Stan cleared his throat. “I know I shouldn’t talk about it—”

“No, no…it’s not your fault. Even had the events of that day not occurred…well, it wasn’t likely that I should have followed that particular path, anyhow. You’re not to blame, Stanley. Honestly, I’m tired of assigning blame.”

Stan smiled half-heartedly. “Heh, we never really talked about that night, did we? I wish I could take it all back…everything I said to you, trying to burn your book…destroying your project by accident when we were kids, and not sayin’ anything to you about it…my whole life’s been a mess up until the last couple of years. I guess—I guess I just wanted to say how sorry I am…and that I’m sorry it took me so long to say it, even though we’ve spent the last six months within ten feet of each other.”

Ford frowned. “I…I’m sorry, as well. I know that I haven’t always been the best brother."

"No, Ford--who would I be without you this past year? You've told me every story from my past a dozen times...you read me news-paper clippings from my grifter days...let's face it, I would be as useful as a sack of potatoes without ya." 

"It doesn't make up for much. I'm...grateful, Stanley, that you brought me back. I know that you must have gone through hell. Dipper and Mabel showed me the clippings from when you faked your death. I can't imagine that was easy." 

“Yeah…” Stan’s voice was low. “It was fine, being Stanford Pines to the bozos in Gravity Falls but... I got a phone call right after the story in the paper came out, from Ma…” He stopped talking suddenly.

Ford respected the silence as it wound on.

Finally, “She was pretty choked up over the phone. I had to do my best Ford voice for her, and thankfully she just thought I was choked up too, or else I know she probably would have recognized the difference. I guess I _was_ choked up. Not for me, but I didn’t know where you were or if you were alive…or if I had killed you. After that, I stopped answering the phone. It was just easier.”  
Stanley had never voiced any of this before.

Ford remained silent for a time. He almost didn’t want to ask his next question, but Stan’s sudden openness spurred both his guilt and his curiosity of the events that had transpired after his vanishing. “And Dad?”

Stan scoffed. “ _Dad_. Even posing as you, he wouldn’t talk to me.”

“I suppose that neither of us made him the millions he hoped for. Sherman was his prefered son...though he left home so early. Married that waitress from the diner on Glass Shard Beach." He twiddled his thumbs together. "Dad was sick for a while, wasn’t he? Ma told me. Did you see him? Before…you know…”

“No.”

“Did you see Ma after his funeral?”

“Only once...I showed up at Pines’ Pawns late so I wouldn’t run into anyone else and spent some time with her. I had been worried that she would know that I wasn’t you the second she saw me…heh, I even wore your clothes and glasses to give some credit to my case. But it didn’t matter. Her dementia was pretty bad, Ford—she cried a lot. She didn’t remember Dad’s first name and forgot who Shermie was for half of our conversation. I think it was just too much for her. First my fake death, then Shermie’s accident, then Dad…” Stan’s eyes misted up. “But even though I tried to talk like you and threw in as many Science words as I could come up with, I think she knew…or distantly did. She kept looking at me with this look, Ford…it’s hard to describe. She cupped my face in both her hands at one point, looked me deeply in the eyes, and shook her head…but she never said anything. That was the last time I saw her…back in 2003.”

Ford cleared his throat softly. “I regret that I missed all of that.”

“I’m sorry you did, too.”

“Honestly…I don’t know if I would have been present for all of it, anyhow, Stanley. I had nearly lost my mind completely when I sent you that post-card. By that time, Fiddleford had left and I had started drinking heavily. I’m sure you noticed all the bottles. I couldn’t sleep—every dream was a nightmare. I had begun to see shadows in the corners of the house that leapt away when I focused onto them… I was at my wit’s end. I remember waking up at my desk and seeing all that I had written in my journal while I slept--what Bill had written. Then you came and I tried to send you away thoughtlessly." His voice faltered. "Being sucked into the portal forced me into a different kind of mentality, though. I suddenly wanted very much to survive, to live to see another day. Had I not gone through what I went through, I might have wanted to end it all.” He looked at Stan pointedly. “In a strange way, our foolish brawl in the basement might have saved me.”

Stan’s eyes had widened. “I knew you weren’t doin’ great, and I definitely threw out tons of whiskey bottles but I didn’t know it had ever…gone that far.”

Ford had slumped over his mug. He sighed. “I’ve never told anyone before now. It’s not something that I’m proud of.”

Stan nodded, saying, “neither of our lives have been a bed of roses, huh?”

“Certainly not. It makes one wonder who one really is.”

Stan smiled a little. “Like you said…thinkin’ about the past and the future? It’s not all bad. We’re goin’ back to Oregon soon, we’ll see the kids. Those little knuckleheads really love ya, ya know? And besides, whether you want me around or not, I’m not goin’ anywhere, Sixer.”

Ford returned the smile, the relief of telling a part of his story spreading through his psyche like a healing balm. Maybe it was enough to be a brother and a grunkle for now…maybe the rest would come later.


End file.
